Thank you again everyone for being in my STAND UP WRITING class. I loved the first class. Some of the jokes and tags received applause breaks from the class. I love that enthusiasm and support. What we’re going to achieve in this class is: learning to mine our theme. ( please run the exercise where you look at your five top stories of your life, your favorite movies, books and jokes and FIND THE PATTERN. What are your lists telling you about you? Find the theme and USE THIS AS THE TEMPLATE FOR YOUR MATERIAL.) We’re going to learn to embed emotion into our material and we’ll achieve this through MISDIRECTION.

1) I’m choosing the story about the time I went sky diving. ( I’m choosing this because it amplifies my theme: IDIOT.) We’re going to be using misdirection : A) Choose a PREMISE/ IDEA. B) Ask yourself what the emotion is in the premise and what you’re resisting in admitting in the premise. This is where the punch line is. Also, make sure the punch line is the opposite of the premise. C) Insert amplifying statements that prop up the premise. This is the bait and switch, these statements take our attention from the punchline. (ALSO: if you don’t use the amplifying statements and just the premise and punchline you have SARCASM.)

EXAMPLE: “Why do we only hear God when we’re near death, plane crashes, Earthquakes, head on collisions? It’s as if God doesn’t care I have a tooth ache.” (What’s something direct opposite of death? Sore tummy, tooth ache, stump my toe….)

Look at the story you chose. Apply misdirection to the OPENING, MIDDLE AND CLOSING parts of your 3/4 minute story. Make sure you use single examples as the amplifying points. Notice my joke, edit, keep it simple.

For next class.: 3/4 minute story, 3 misdirection jokes, make sure your theme is in the set, have a printed copy of your story without the jokes in them. Have fun everyone. Remember, work harder than you think you can. That’s where the jokes are.